Change.org petition: requesting that the Men's Health Information and Resource Centre's (MHIRC’s) funding should be renewed

Men take their own lives at four times the rate of women (that's five men a day, on average). Accidents, cancer and heart disease all account for the majority of male deaths (http://www.menshealthweek.org.au/En/Pages/ee4d91/Why-Men-s-Health.aspx)

MHIRC focuses particularly on the health status of marginalised or disadvantaged males - this includes populations such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, unemployed men, separated men, incarcerated men, new dads and other males who may find themselves at risk of increased stress and therefore poorer health outcomes.

Important global role that NSW plays in men’s health (for a very modest investment) and the valuable role MHIRC .

MHIRC work has also had a national (even international) impact. Projects like MENGAGE and men’s health week have attracted national and international attention.

Call for a new men’s health policy to replace the one that ends in June, 2013

Request that MHIRC’s funding should be renewed,

Request that if there is a tender for men’s health work in NSW that men’s health work not be split into separate projects – this will dilute the effectiveness of any men’s health work as well as increasing the incidental costs across a number of organisations.

Click here to sign the petition.

21st century man: lost and anachronistic? (SMH article)

Today's Sydney Morning Herald features an article by Guy Mosel titled 21st century man: lost and anachronistic. Overall it's a very good overview of the various strands of the men's movement. However, it suffers from a couple of problems that most media coverage of men's issues falls into.

Firstly, while highlighting many of the issues that are faced by modern day males, it sometimes presents them as if they are "men's own fault", rather than focusing on the social determinants that give rise to them. For example, men are called "stupid and "lacking ambition." Imagine we called women "stupid and lacking ambition" in the 1950s when females were underperfoming at schools and in the workplace! Imagine we called girls suffering from eating disorders "stupid"! We don't do this for women - we see the larger social structures in place that cause their problems - so there's no reason to do this for men.

By taking this at times hostile and sneering look at the men's movement, the article illustrates very well the challenges faced by men's activists. Media coverage of the women's movement is, on the whole, favourable and sympathetic. When the men's movement actually gets some media coverage (such as Mosel's piece), it is treated quite differently.

Secondly, the article ignores all the wonderful things that men and boys do every day to make the world a better place: fighting bushfires and floods; building the roads, buildings and infrastructures that we all depend upon; mining, logging, deep-sea fishing, long-distance transportation; doing frontline dangerous work in the military, police and security - risking their own health, safety and well-being to help others. Not to mention being great husbands, boyfriends, partners, lovers, mates and mentors, and increasingly being irreplaceable hands-on dads.

And while the article presents the men's movement as a rag-tag mish-mash of disparate views and opinions, the same can easily be said of the women's movement. Both movements are essential to make the world a better place for all people - men, women and children. And both movements are necessarily diverse - as diverse as our societies are.

But these quibbles aside, Mosel must be given credit for taking the time to research and write such an in-depth article about the men's movement - one that will raise these issues with a wider mainstream audience, and hopefully stimulate some much-needed discussion about men and boys and their needs. 

Here's the article...

Click to read more ...

Book review of "Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination " by Edward Kruk

This book is, in a word, courageous, in one sense in particular: it exposes how ideologies, “isms” based on an assumed superiority in which one group feels entitled to power over another, have no place in the quest for social justice, equality among human beings, because a state of inequality is inherently undermining of human well being. The example presented by Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young of McGill University, in their book Legalizing Misandry, is that of ideological feminism. This is the second book in their trilogy, Spreading Misandry being the first and Transcending Misandry the forthcoming concluding volume.

Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men, despite its breadth, may have only skimmed the surface of the topic of institutionalized hatred against men in North American society, a “top-down” phenomenon with ideological third wave feminism as its source. Yet the book brings the full range of the current anti-male discourse in US and Canadian academic and legal circles into the spotlight, examining, among other issues, sexual abuse, violence against women, workplace harassment, child custody, prostitution and pornography, and human rights as entitlements.

From New Male Studies: An International Journal - Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2013, pp. 82-84.

Download full review.

The Completely Unregulated Practice of Male Circumcision: Human Rights’ Abuse Enshrined in Law? By John Geisheker

We are witnessing a disturbing tend to “enshrine” male circumcision into law, shielding the practice from health and safety regulation of any kind. This trend precedes any honest attempt to assess “morbidity,” the unavoidable complications of any surgery, especially poignant for this unregulated and pre-germ-theory practice. Without a thorough assessment of morbidity, all bioethical discussions are, logically, premature. The author details a “permissive and incautious” milieu, including a lack of qualifications for circumcisers, rudimentary training, septic non-clinical settings, withheld anesthesia and analgesia, sub-optimal surgical protocols, a lack of back-up resources, minimal post-operative observation, minimal legal remedies, and other shortcomings. It is argued that serious inquiry must ethically precede blanket legal protections accommodating atavistic adult urges.

From New Male Studies: An International Journal - Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2013, pp. 18-45.

Download article.

Workplace gender equality: call for public comments

The Acting Minister for the Status of Women, Jenny Macklin, today called for public comment to help develop the next stage of the Australian Government’s landmark workplace gender equality reforms.

The introduction of the Workplace Gender Equality Act in November means employers with 100 or more employees will be required from 2014 to provide information against a standard set of gender equality indicators in their workplace.

“The Government is currently consulting on the specific reporting detail contained in the gender equality indicators,” Ms Macklin said.

“We want to make sure the reporting process is both simple and effective.

“We are asking anyone with a special knowledge or interest in workplace gender equality to let us know their priorities.

Click to read more ...